


And my loneliness is heavier than life

by Ruta



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clarke's Mindspace, Cryogenics, F/M, POV Bellamy Blake, POV Clarke Griffin, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Slow Burn, The Girl Who Waited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2020-09-07 18:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20313775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: "You are so young," she murmurs against his skin.Bellamy pulls her hair away from her face. They are a shock of tousled, dirty blond plaits, like she wore them back then. It seems that an entire powder keg or the muddy side of a river are hidden between her locks. When he rests his forehead against hers, she feels his breath against her nose. "You too.""I haven't felt young in a long time." It’s easy to admit it looking like this, when she had not yet become Wanheda, when she had not yet written a list of survivors condemning the rest of her people to certain death. Before Praimfaya, before Madi, before ten years of solitude with a sword instead of a heart.(Clarke wakes up fifty years before anyone else from cryogenic sleep and it takes her ten years to find a solution.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Maybe we'll meet again, when we are slightly older and our minds less hectic, and I'll be right for you and you'll be right for me. But right now, I am chaos to your thoughts and you are poison to my heart. **   
**\- Chris Cadle**

Monty's video logs just ended.

Bellamy continues to observe the red light of the second sun expanding along the planet's surface. It seems on fire, like it's burning.

For a moment he is on another spaceship, observing a different planet that consumes itself, with his heart in turmoil and a voice in his head that whispers with something that is more than raw agony, more than mere despair, more than heartbreak. It feels like he's been torn apart, like someone has just ripped half of himself away. Because '_when will it be enough? How many times will he have to lose her before the universe thinks it is enough? How do you know how much is too much? When can the wait be over and let start whatever lies ahead?'_

Clarke's absence at his side is an amputation.

It's a pain that is not foreign to him. He knows it, powerful, ancient and familiar. It resounds inside him like the drumbeats of war, the howling of the wind during a storm. He knows he can survive this kind of pain that eats him down to his molecules and bones, that seems to shrink his skin, suck the oxygen out of his lungs, make his sockets explode, burn his brain synapses, mark his soul and scream inside him. _Screaming screaming screaming_. A name. A hope. A regret that has the taste of resentment, of the snow when it melts.

He has already lived a life without her. He can live with the syndrome of a phantom limb. The point has never been survive. He did it once, twice. He knows he can do it.

_He doesn't know if he wants to._

*

"Bellamy."

Maybe it's an impression or a lights effect, but Clarke's face is paler than usual on the screen. Her voice is steady while her eyes dart nervously to the side as if they cannot concentrate on the monitor. They contain an urgency that in everyone else would be anguish or wrath.

"Something went terribly wrong. I'll record a new video when I have more information to share."

*

"I tried to fix it."

He sees her burst into a querulous laugh, run a hand through her hair. She appears tense and worried. When was the last time she slept?

"It seems I have overestimated my engineering skills. Not that I'm really surprised. I couldn't get a radio to work in six years."

At the mention of her radio calls, his chest sorely compresses. Breathing becomes difficult, almost a Herculean task, beyond the oppression that has spread to his throat like an infection. He doesn't know what to hope for. _If this is the end. If this is all that's left of her_. Stolen moments of something that has already happened in the past, already written and therefore unchangeable.

Clarke sighs. Her exhausted eyes, rimmed with purplish shadows for the sleep deprivation, pierce the screen, shine with the promise she is making.

"I'll keep trying."

Bellamy releases the breath he didn't realize was holding back. Both breathe, even if on different timelines. As long as they breathe, there is still hope.

*

"I woke up fifty years ahead of schedule," she announces tersely in the third video log.

The date at the bottom of the registration informs him that seven months have passed since the first one. Her hair reaches her shoulders now, not an indomitable mass of curls, but a liquid cascade of gold and ambrosia. Gold as must have been the fleece stolen by Jason or Eris' apple of discord. Precious, forbidden, unattainable.

She frowns as if an unpleasant thought crossed her mind but really, what isn't unpleasant in their lives?

"This means that if I can't fix the failure in my pod, when you and the others will wake up, I might be dead or I'll be old enough to be your grandmother or my mother's mother." She hesitates to admit in a broken whisper, giving voice to the chasm in which waits and hides the fear of both, "I don't know which alternative scares me most."

* 

"I saw Monty's video logs."

She stops talking for a while. Her head tilted, as if she wanted to cradle it in her hands, and her resigned posture, as if she could collapse at any moment. Her ragged little breaths. The slight tremor in her hands, joined in her lap, finger so thin and white against the black of the clothes she wears. The silence lasts long enough for Bellamy to distinctly hear the crash of his heart that breaks little by little, sob after sob.

He puts his palms on the sides of the screen because he can't touch her, places his forehead against its cold, flat surface and waits, while he cries with her the friends they lost, the tangle of all the unspoken words and hanging half-truths between them, the broken promises, the fuzzy possibilities, every single impossible choice and morally unacceptable action, but necessary to ensure theirs pelle people safety.

He doesn't know what's worse. If the lacerating doubt of not have find out yet whether she made it, or observing the devastating effects of loneliness, knowing that he cannot reach her, not being able to do anything. To be powerless once again. Only a helpless spectator. Observe as an intruder, crossed by a desire that surpasses even nostalgia and loss.

"It'll be the same to see mine?"

He is experiencing the same panic. Will he see her die before his eyes?

When she raises her chin, lips trembling and swollen eyelids, her palpitating eyelashes cast sinister shadows on her damp cheeks. Beyond the temporal distance, Clarke's sunken eyes meet his. For a moment they are impossibly close, unsustainably distant, so incredibly dear. "I wish there was another way."

*

"I cannot do this."

Two years and five months have passed.

He saw her fight. He saw how she destroyed herself after every failed attempt. He has seen her accept yet another burden and commit herself in finding a solution, facing it as the umpteenth obstacle to overcome. Only this time the waves are too high. The raft risks being smashed against the rocks and she is drowning in the dark depths of the sea. After ten years of blood and fire wasted fighting a war that wasn't his own, it took another ten years for Odysseus to find his Ithaca, because of a cruel god and his own arrogance. It'll be the same for them?

"I can't do it. Not again," Clarke says and it sounds like a prayer and a curse. Her fists are pressed against her closed eyes, her face piched. There has been no progress. Her pod still doesn't work.

"Yes you can," he replies. He knows she can't hear him. It's not how it works. He doesn't care. A part of her can. It's the part that made her talk to him through a broken radio, every day for six years. The same feeling now animates him, the propulsive force that creates and destroys, raises to stars and pulverizes. "You already did once. You can do it again."

"I wasn't alone the first time," she says as if she had heard him, pushing her hands away just enough for him to have a glimpse of iridescent blue. It's an absurd thought, pure madness, but strangely comforting. His heart makes a discordant note against his ribs.

"I had Madi. I had y-" she stops abruptly, pursing her lips.

_You_, she looks like she wants to say. _You you_. He waits patiently, mesmerised by what he sees. Waiting. What else can he do?

"There is something you need to know." She tells him what he already knows, what Madi told him. "I know it sounds crazy," she says defensively, as vulnerable as a few other times he has ever seen her, as young as she hasn't appeared to him since Atom's death. "But talking to you every day, even if you never answered, kept me sane."

There is so much more that she is communicating, is telling him between the lines, and he has to struggle to regain control. He's overwhelmed. It feels like his tongue is stick to the roof of his upper palate, his mouth full of sand.

"It's not crazy." He tries to smile, but it's atrophied. A part of him is still sleeping in the pod. Perhaps this a a nightmare and when he'll wake up she will be by his side as it should be, as it should have always been from the beginning. "A little pathetic maybe, but not crazy."

Her smile is as sudden as a mirage of spring, small and bright to look at, as beautiful as the sad and fragile things everyone wants to protect at all costs. She wipes the edge of her eyes with her sleeve and clears her throat. Raises an eyebrow tentatively.

"I'm pretty sure you just made a pungent remark. I wish I heard it." A pause, the smile has not yet disappeared, but it's no longer like a dawn, rather it has turned more like a sunset. "I wish I could see you."

**And so it seems I must always write you letters I can never send. **   
**\- Sylvia Platt**

After this video he drops to his knees, gasping. He doesn't know if he is able to continue. He doesn't know if he is ready to accept the terrifying possibility that she didn't- that she-

Jordan pauses it. The screen doesn't go black, it simply freezes on Clarke's profile cut out in the monitor frame.

Bellamy closes his eyes. It's pointless. Her image has taken root on his retinas just like the sound of her voice. How could he forget so long? _This_ is how she affects him. Like the song of the mermaid that enveloped the sailors, bewitching them to the point of voluntarily pushing them towards a slow and atrocious death.

Eventually he recognizes the scorching fire in the pit of his stomach, the tension in his slumped shoulders that seems to drag him downward. It's anger. Red-hot and glowing. Even this is familiar, especially if associated to her. Once identified for what it is, it's impossible to feel anything else. Anger counterbalance to attenuate, mitigate. It's ice on a burn. Almost overshadows everything else.

"Why didn't she wake up one of us?" He barely recognizes his own voice.

The silence that surrounds them is deafening after Clarke's meaningful truths, the confessions in her loving, longing glances. She could have woken up Raven. She could have woken up _him_. Together they would've find a solution. She wasn't supposed to bear any of this alone.

Jordan doesn't respond immediately, he seems on edge. "She did," he admits reluctantly.

Bellamy lifts his head and looks at him. Who, he wants to ask. At first there is absolute wonder, then resentment. _Why not him?_

Jordan is oddly abashed and defensive. "She wanted to do," he immediately corrects himself, "but in the end..." he sighs. "There is a limit to the sins that a person can atone for or can feel guilty about." He spoke with a strong voice and an intense expression. It reminds him of Monty, but also of Harper. It isn't just empathy. It's kindness. It's understanding. It's acceptance.

"Maybe I shouldn't." He turns his back to him and starts fiddling with the console. Another screen above their heads lights up and begins to emit a slight buzz. Over his shoulder, Jordan catches his eye again for a brief moment before a new recording begins on the screen. "There's something I want to show you."

There are other images of Clarke, this time stolen from security cameras and without audio. In this one she is next to his pod, caught from behind. Sitting in the dark, her frowning face is conflicted, sorrowful. He knows why. He recognizes the faraway look in her eyes. The same after Mount Weather. _Damn it._

Jordan's eyes reflect the same kind of hard, deep conflict. Leaving behind what you love to not have to be left behind. Surrender, sacrifice. Devotion. A love that overcomes the instinct of self-preservation. "She couldn't do this to you."

*

"Today is my birthday, Bellamy. It's a special one. Do you want to know why?"

Her lips are curved upwards, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes which instead are closed and watchful, dangerous as hidden traps. The eyes of a woman who is changing, aging without him. _Once again_.

"I'm all ears," he replies wearily.

"I'm thirty years old. Do you know what that means?" Clarke leans forward until they are a few inches apart. A few inches and forty-four years. She sounds amused and he easily guesses the reason. "I'm older than you."

For an instant it is easy to forget where he is, to concentrate only on the woman in front of him, on her eyebrows ironically arched, on the mole above her upper lip, on her hair cut short and untidy that looks like a lion's mane. How easy it would be to move that unruly strand of hair that falls on her forehead.

"It's been six years since I woke up from cryogenic sleep," she says and every trace of leisure disappears in a new flash of blinding suffering. "Six years," she repeats in a strange, hollow voice. "Isn't it funny? It's longer the time we spent apart than that we've ever spent together. Do you hate it as much as I do?"

The smoke of cities in flames, fallen kingdoms, burning planets, shattered bodies of ash, a bottle of moonshine.

He clenches his jaw.

_You know I do_.

*

It's a déjà-vu. The feeling is exhausting. It's like observing a scene already seen.

His fear intensifies. He knows her, her many facets, expressions and forms. Howewer her face is inscrutable now. Different in a penetrating, poignant, unbearable way. Nine years have passed since she woke up alone. Other days that will never come back, lost in the Minotaur's maze.

"This will be the last video. I may have found a way to crack the system. If I fix it, I'll see you on the other side. If I don't..."

The implications are hateful. Like him, she prefers not to consider the alternative.

"Before I go, there's a few things I'd like you to know, that I _need_ you to know. We've never been completely honest, you and I."

He understands what she is doing as he recalls with a start an old, painful memory. It's like reliving the moment in Becca's lab. Only this time he cannot hush her, nor embrace her. He cannot find comfort in her hands resting on the small of his back. It sounds like a goodbye and could be the definitive one. He hates this, its inevitability. Motionless, he can't take his eyes off of her.

"Clarke," he croaks desperately, as if she could really hear him, as if he could prevent what is happening, that has already happened, as if he could stop the torture of yet another yearning. "You don't have to."

"Time has never been on our side," she continues undaunted. She is averted from him, twisting in her seat, chin raised, eyes reconnoitring. "I didn't like you at the beginning. I found you patronizing and cynical."

"I didn't like you either," he replies dryly, without real conviction. "You've been a thorn in my side from day one."

"But then I saw what you were willing to do to protect your sister."

Despite continuing to stare at him, as she speaks he perceives the way she has become estranged, reliving their common memories, the story that made them what they are, that brought them exactly where they are.

"I saw how many times you tried to do the right thing even when doing the right thing was impossible. It's silly, but now that they are lost, I miss those days, when I didn't know you, when my only concern was keeping you and the kids in check. I miss what we had then, what we were, what we were becoming."

He misses their old life too. He misses it keenly because she was there.

"I want you to know that leaving you behind has been a mistake. I am a murderer and my hands are covered with the blood and deaths of hundreds, but my biggest regret is you. I should have told you when I could. I thought I had time. I was wrong and I'm sorry. I should never have left you in Polis."

She's got a desperate look in her shining eyes, liquid for a bitter unhappiness.

"It doesn't matter," he says brokenly. "I forgive you. I've already forgiven you a century ago."

She swallows. She isn't crying, but she's very close to. "Tell Madi that I love her. Tell my mother and the others that I'm sorry. And Bellamy, I..."

"I know, Clarke. Me too." _I love you I love you I love you._

She winces. "I suppose it's goodbye for now."

*

He doesn't know how much time has passed. Jordan puts a hand on his shoulder and from the nebulous demise of his conscience, Bellamy finds the strength to cross the abyss he is into and to look at his face.

"I'm sorry," Jordan says.

Bellamy nods. For what? Because she was once again left behind, alone, surrounded by thin air and ghosts? Or perhaps because there is something worse that he has not yet had the courage to tell him? It would make sense. Jordan woke up first and could have had the time to see Clarke's video logs, check her pod, monitor the ship's situation to the point that he knew it would be necessary to show him surveillance records at some point. He already knows if Clarke made it. He's just a boy and what he witnessed would break older men. It broke _him_.

"Did she make it?"

Jordan avoids his eyes and every dark and terrifying thought resurfaces.

"Not like she had hoped."

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Jordan must sense his impatience, his growing frustration. "After that video she remained awake another ten months."

Ten months. So she was awake for-

"Nine years, ten months and fourteen days," says Jordan, anticipating him. Bellamy has no time to metabolize.

The boy looks devastated and guilty, as if he knew he struck a fatal blow to an opponent already on the ground, but straightens his shoulders and met his gaze with quiet determination. "There is one last video you need to see."

*

"Is it some kind of joke?" Murphy asks at the end of Clarke's second video log.

God, he would wish.

Bellamy bursts into a bitter laugh and turns away from them. He closes his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. The bandages wrapped around his hands annoyingly rub against the fabric of the shirt. Little red spots are appearing, like rust flowers, and the pain that runs through his knuckles is a constant, dull and rhythmic pulse. Below him the first sun sets and the second rises while the planet's outline is jagged by dazzling reverberations of different colors. It should be a breathtaking view. _It should_.

While Clarke continues to talk, the other don't make a sound, silenced by what can only be described as aghast horror.

At first Raven's face remains expressionless, but begins to falter after the fourth recording, exactly as it happened to him two days ago. After the end of the last recording the atmosphere in the room becomes claustrophobic.

Bellamy approaches the group and turns off the monitor. Jordan is sitting in a corner, taciturn and restless. Certainly it wasn't how he had expected his awakening, to make their acquaintance. 

Predictably Murphy is the first to rediscover the gift of speech and his voice is full of blame and dismay. "Don't tell me you're seriously gonna to do it."

"That's what Clarke wants," he answers wary.

"So we're really letting her sleep for another five years?" If Murphy hoped to get support, his hope crashes against the absence of collective reactions. They are all in the initial denial phase. "Am I the only one who finds it an idiotic idea? You have nothing to say, Reyes?"

Questioned directly, Raven raises her head. "Why should we wake her up?" she growls, spitting every word like acid, corrosive and hostile. "We don't need her. We survived without her for six years. What are five more?"

He knows she doesn't really think that and the harshness is just a cover, a camouflage net. She does so to hide her more emotional side behind a ruthless carelessness that verges on cruelty. Even if he didn't know her well, the traces of dry tears on her cheeks would betray her and would be clear evidence of how distraught she actually is by the whole situation. Despite everything, it is difficult to not stiffen and to listen to what she said, the more it is to digest it.

"Emori?" He sees her turn to him. She doesn't seem upset, but her eyes are sad and full of resolution.

"I'm with Murphy," she says. "We already left her behind once." The words reverberate inside him, as if someone were tattooing them in his skull. They sound like a reproach.

"It would really be let her behind?" Echo intervenes. "This time she wants it. It's her request."

Everyone's eyes are on him again, as if they were telling him that the decision is up to him.

"Jordan. You're part of the family. What do you think?"

"I-" Jordan hesitates, as if he didn't expect anyone to ask his opinion. "The choice is Clarke's and I think we should respect it," he answers slowly, "but there are people on this ship who have the right to express their opinion more than I do."

"What are you suggesting?" Murphy questions. "That we put it to a vote?"

Jordan doesn't let himself be affected by the snarky retort and doesn't avert his gaze, although it's clear that the subject makes him uncomfortable. Probably it causes unpleasant memories to resurface.

"I'm just saying that Clarke has a mother and a daughter."

_Madi_, he thinks with a sudden twinge like someone had punched him in the ribcage.

Then, as if that weren't enough, Jordan looks at him apologetically before dropping yet another bomb. "Bellamy isn't the only one Clarke left a message for."

**When you come back, you will not be you. And I may not be I. **   
**\- E.M. Foster**

_Bellamy, if this is the last chance to say it, I don't want to waste it. _ _Madi, my mother, our friends are in my heart. All of them are the reason I always went forward, that I did what I did. __I am the person I chose to be to protect what I love. _ _If I could go back, I'd do it all over again, even knowing the consequences. I hated myself for so long, but I don't regret my mistakes because they remain mine, part of what I am, for better or for worse. But you, Bellamy, you're not like them. You are not in there with the others, you are all that surrounds them. You are my whole heart. You have been for a long time. You're my best friend, my family, my other half, the best part of me. _ _I'm sorry if I lost sight of that for a while. The truth is that I'm tired of being angry with you. You betrayed me, but this is not the last thought I want of you. W__e've been through so much, you and me. I know you moved on and lived your life and it's time for me to do the same. That's why, because I trust you more than anyone in the world, that I have a request to make. I ask you not to wake me up. _ _Don't misunderstand. I want you to wake me up, I just don't want you to do it right away. I lost so much, Bellamy. I have been waiting for you for half my life. I don't want to look back and mourn all these years that I haven't lived with you. I don't ask you to wait ten years, not even eight. I ask you five years. _ _By then, by the time you wake me up, we'll have the same age. By then, I hope you will have forgiven me too. I hope I can have a place in your lives. I hope... may we meet again. _

*

_Madi, I know you will probably be angry and you will be disappointed. I want you to understand that it's not your fault.__You are the only reason I survived six years on Earth, that I resisted for so long. I know you think I saved your life the day I found you, but it was the opposite. You saved me. I was so lonely and desperate and my heart was broken, but you allowed me to get up on my legs and returned to me something I had lost. A family. You gave me hope. Hope for a better future and the strength to fight for that future, to come back to my home. __I'm sorry if I'm not a better person. I wish things had turned out differently. I don't ask you not to hate me, only to respect my choice. __Bellamy will be there for you and so my mother and the rest of the delinquents. __Take care of them in my place, as they will take care of you. You are no longer a child, but you will always be my child. _ _I'm so proud of you, of the special person you are. __Be kind and compassionate, don't let battles harden you and compromise your capacity for forgiveness. __Make your choices and don't deny them, don't waver even when the world comes at you. _ _Don't seek confrontation unless it is strictly necessary. Fight to defend and not for the pleasure of blood. Revenge is never justice. __Don't fall in love with power because it corrupts and clouds your reason, darkens your understanding. _ _Be brave even when you are afraid, use your head and your heart together and never forget who you are, stay true to your principles. __Before being the Commander, you are my daughter, you are yourself. This isn't goodbye, it's just a see you later. I love you, Madi. I miss you every hour of every day. Wait for me in the future. _

_*_

_Mom, if you're looking at this, it's probably because you're deciding whether to wake me up. I_ _ won't ask you not to wake me up. I already know that you will vote for it. I__ want you to know that I have forgiven you. For what you did to dad. I was doing the same before the Priamfaya with that damn list. Now I can see it, I can understand. _ _How did you feel when you saw Dad die. Now I know why you did it. I did the same. You were trying to protect me, to save me, to do the right thing. __How did you survive this pain, knowing you had hurt someone you loved so deeply, that you betrayed his trust, that you left him to die? You learn to accept it and to live with it, I believe, as with everything else. __I'm so tired of being this kind of person. I'm so tired of living without my heart. I've tried to be better, to be good, but every time I lose someone or I fall behind. I__'m so sick of it. I miss my family. I miss being my father's daughter. I want to taste the peace that I have not known since I set foot on Earth. __I'm thirty-four and I have been in war and fought for half my life. I don't want to stop fighting, just... I want some time to heal. I was a healer once. It's time for me to rest. T__ake care of them for me. I love you, mom. I miss you. I know you will always do the right thing even if I don't agree with it._


	2. Chapter 2

**Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you. ** **It's a black wall. It's a thief. **

**\- Dave Grohl **

No matter how many times he watches Clarke's video logs, every time is like the first, equally painful.

_I miss you every hour of every day. Wait for me in the future._

Even after he shuts down the recording and the screen turns black, Jordan stays close to Madi, far enough to give her space, close enough to let her know that he is there for her if she needs him.

Bellamy stares at them, easily recognizing the gradual bonding they are building. It's something he would have done with Octavia. Muscle memory. As an instinct to protect impossible to suppress or silence.

Apart from Abby, locked up in the medbay to seek a cure for Kane, only Raven and Murphy wanted to be present of the rest of the group and they are, even if strategically located in various points of the room. Raven stands by the window with her back on them. Murphy is sitting at the table. Just like the first time, no one utters a word. Not that he had expected different reactions. A week has passed since they woke up and he and Abby had a long discussion before deciding whether to wake Madi. Holding the opposing view to Abby who would have preferred to wait a little longer, at the time it had seemed the right thing to do. Now, looking at the girl's sagged shoulders, he wonders if it wasn't cruel on his part, if he didn't make a mistake.

"Madi," he says, places a hand on her shoulder. She makes a face, and he tries not to take it personally. She just lost her mother, or at least that's what she thinks. Her absence is the reality she may have to live with for another five years. It's a normal reaction. It will pass. "I know it's difficult. You don't have to force yourself. It's normal for you to be mad at her."

She chases his hand away. This time it's impossible not to feel hurt. It is a deliberate, intentional gesture.

"At _her_?" she repeats, scowling. The sorrow that blazes in her eyes is indissolubly mixed with an anger that seems exaggerated for such a young person. He knows that age means nothing. He remembers another girl unhappy and furious with the world, victim of circumstances and an inflexible system. "Do you think that's the problem? I'm not mad at Clarke."

Bellamy hopes that his face isn’t betraying the confusion he feels. "She left you."

"She left you too," she replies. "Are you still angry?"

He doesn't know what to answer. The truth is, he would like to be mad at her for leaving him behind, but he can't, not really. He is angry because he isn’t and because he would like to be. The anger he feels is directed primarily against himself, not against Clarke.

"You see?" Madi shakes her head as if she had peaked in his mind. "You are like me. You love her too much to really hate her."

She looks at him with far-sighted and too old eyes. These are the eyes of who have lived a hundred lives and fought a thousand battles, shed the blood of their enemies and buried families and allies, seen devastation and death. These are Clarke's eyes after Mount Weather. The horror of that discovery takes his breath away.

"If you're not mad at her, then-"

"Don't you understand yet? I'm angry with you, with all of you. I told you about the radio calls. Did you speak with her about it?"

"I was waiting for the right moment." He hates the way he looks defensive, but he hates even more the disappointment with which Madi is looking at him.

"She waited you for six years," she says, unexpectedly harsh in her brutal bluntness. She turns towards the others and, if possible, her face seems to darken even more. "She waited all of you for six years. Six years, can you imagine it?" In the impetus of the movement, her hair traces a threatening arch in the air, braids as thick as coils of snakes. She looks like one of the Erinyes, ruthless and blood-thirsty, ready to avenge the crime against her family. "Then she spent ten more on her own."

"She could have woken up any of us," Raven points out, facing her gaze without the slightest hesitation or shame.

Madi stiffens and her expression betrays a flash of surprise, of vulnerability. "She chose not to," she declares and the security in her voice shines like a beacon. The trust she places in Clarke is blinding, indestructible. It reminds him of what was once his. "Do you know why? She carried the weight so that none of you had to do it. When it was just the two of us, Clarke would tell me stories about you. Sometimes they were funny stories, sometimes stories that made her cry. She talked about you all the time, what you were willing to do to protect each other. You were always the heroes, but you aren’t." If a look could turn to stone - he closes his eyes, defeated before she delivers the coup de grace. "My mother is. She lied to me. She said we were going to be a family."

The silence is thunderous, and it seems that reality can collapse from one moment to another under the weight of bitterness that one can breathe in the air as a living, multifaceted, rancid thing. Jordan alternates moments where he is with his head down with others where his eyes have a bewildered look.

Madi has her lips so pressed together that her mouth looks like a thin scar, her cheeks are greyish.

"Each of us has done wrong things for the right reasons or things we regret," he tries to placate her, placing a hand on her elbow. She stares intently at his hand and then at his face before shaking her head, in denial of what he has just said.

He is losing her. It's like with Octavia all over again. The tragedy of another girl who stops idealizing him like a hero and recognizes his human, imperfect nature. "We are a family," he says, trying to sound reassuring, persuasive and not terrified as if he were on the edge of a precipice. "We can be."

"You don't care about Clarke." She's not screaming and maybe it's the worst thing. It is not a little girl's outburst, but the accurate, convinced and disillusioned analysis of an adult. "You don't deserve her."

"What would you know? You're just a kid," Murphy intervenes. There is no real bite or malice in his tone, but his words sting the same. It doesn't seem long since the same sentence was directed to all of them. With arrogance, patronizing, as a matter of fact. Something to be ashamed of.

"No, I'm not," Madi says softly and Murphy is the first of the two to look away. Clarke would be proud of her and perhaps, besides pride, she would also feel a stab of sadness at the idea that she grew up so quickly. "Not anymore thanks to him," she continues, lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders. "I am Heda."

"Madi." He takes a step towards her but doesn't touch her. Would she dodge his hand away again? "You know why I did it. You accepted."

"I know, but did she know?" Here is the accusation again, the eye of her exacerbated doubts. "Did you ever tell her? No, because you were waiting for the right time,” she mimics him with a grimace. “It's your fault if she doesn't want to wake up." Then, little more than a bitter whisper, but just as audible, "I wish you’d stayed where you were."

When she walks out of the room with rapid and measured steps, he knows he has lost her. He is tempted to follow her and punch something. Not necessarily in this order.

"Have we seen different videos without my noticing, or have I missed something?" Murphy asks.

"Shut up, Murphy," he and Jordan say simultaneously.

Murphy rolls his eyes in his direction then, turning to Jordan, brings a hand to his chest. "I thought I was your favourite."

Jordan reacts as if he hasn't opened his mouth. "She's right."

"Not you too," Murphy groans and puts his head back on his arms as if all that arguing had worn him out.

"You can't understand because you didn’t go through it. You can’t understand what it means, not really. You can die of loneliness or you can go crazy. Clarke managed not to do either."

"We have another fan of Clarke Griffin," Murphy mocks.

"Someone has to," Jordan says with unusual firmness.

"What does that mean?" Raven asks.

"You’ve made it crystal clear." Jordan raises his hands in what should be a conciliatory gesture. His expression betrays a different feeling, close to Madi's disappointment, but deeper, just as mature. "This is your family and you are willing to do anything to protect each other yet you blame her for doing the same. She is a mother and was trying to protect her daughter in a war where you had made her a target. Have you ever asked her why she did what she did? No, obviously not."

Before he leaves, Bellamy tries to stop him. "Where are you going?"

"To find Madi," he responds and pulls back. "I can understand her frustration. I liked it better when you were just stories."

*

He and Miller have just finished arranging guard duty on the bridge. Bellamy is about to leave, but he notices Miller's hesitation, the way he is lingering in the corridor.

"Is there anything else we need to discuss?"

Miller struggles in meeting his eyes, as if he hates what he is about to do, but feels he has no choice. He is more like the boy who was his right-hand man at the Dropship, the ghosts of what happened in the bunker trapped with Octavia in her sleep. "We have to decide what to do with Clarke."

Bellamy freezes and feels the smile petrifying on his lips. When exactly did Clarke's name become a taboo? It’s like stepping back in time to six years ago, reliving the horror and pain of an ancient nightmare. Historical recourses.

He twists his mouth and nods abruptly. "Tell the others. We'll meet on the bridge in an hour."

*

"I think the only people who have the right to vote are me, Madi and -"

Bellamy gets in the way before she can finish. It’s about Clarke and her future they are discussing. There is no way that he can be ousted by a decision of that calibre. "If you think I'll let you decide without me-"

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the slight wrinkle of Abby's lips, as if she had prepared herself exactly for that kind of reaction on his part and he had not disregarded her expectations. At any other moment, he would think that the light in her eyes, so alike to Clarke's and at the same time so different, is amused. "And you, Bellamy," she concludes as if he hadn't interrupted her. Whatever it was, the light has already dimmed. Her eyes are sombre again, her face suddenly aged ten years, her lips curled down. "My daughter cares about you, so I think it should be the three of us and nobody else."

The strange, pleasant satisfaction that grasps him for having just been implicitly recognized as a member of Clarke's family disappears immediately. This is not how it should happen.

*

The irritation towards Abby resurfaces after just half an hour. He regrets the absence of the group, especially Jordan. In the last few days, he has had the opportunity to observe him interacting with others, to evaluate his potential. What he discovered is promising. He has Monty's insightful and bright mind; he is as empathetic as Harper was. He likes to stay in the rear. At first glance, he may appear introverted and shy, but it is only because he is still getting used to the idea of being surrounded by so many people.

"Confused?" Madi repeats. She is responding to Abby that had this to say about Clarke's mental and emotional state when she recorded the videos for them. That’s why the psychological factor must be considered in her professional opinion as a doctor. It doesn't matter what Clarke wants, but what she needs and for Abby she needs the support of her family, reassurance and comfortable environments. Not isolation and being estranged from the reality more than she has already been.

"Clarke was clear," Madi says. "She isn’t willing to be woken up before five years." It is evident how much Clarke's request has devastated her, how painful is the prospect of having to wait so long before seeing her again, but also her desire to respect her will. It's something he can understand. Panic and torment. Waking up at night with a start, the bloodbath of yet another nightmare still imprinted like a gash behind the eyelids, and remembering that she is not lost, only in stasis; allowing himself to check with his own eyes, going to sit next to her pod, sometimes in silence, sometimes spending the dark and quiet hours before dawn to tell her about the six years he spent on the Ring convinced that she was dead.

"Many things can happen in five years," Abby replies.

_Not as many as in ten_, he thinks. He remains silent, observing that clash of titans.

“I know my daughter. She is a fighter."

Madi's facial muscles contract in an expression of irritation and he decides that it’s time to intervene. "Maybe it's better to stop for today," he says. "We will never come to a decision this way."

"No," says Madi with a stubborn tilt in her chin. "I want us to decide now." The look in her eyes makes it difficult for him to breathe for the memories it stirs.

"We don't have to."

Madi looks away and thins her lips. "Yes, we do. My mother, my responsibility, right?"

_And God, why does everything have to be so fucking hard?_

Bellamy nods, clenching his fists. "She would be proud of you, kiddo."

*

When Echo pulls him to the side, a few days later, every fibre of his body and fragment of his mind already knows what she intends to tell him. Despite everything, when she tackles the subject head-on and talks about how everything has changed, that is not anyone's fault, but it is the state of things, he still feels a dull pain at chest height.

"I love you," he says and in a reality that has become a nightmare it seems a glimmer of comfort.

Echo meets his gaze with dignity and just a hint of bitterness. "I know. I know you love me, but you love her more. I don't like it, but I understand. She has been with you from the beginning."

_You stayed with me when there was no ground under my feet. Literally as well as figuratively_. He would like to say that, instead he finds himself blinking and whispering huskily, "I can't choose."

"You don’t have to." It is not an accusation, only a statement. Both know that Clarke will always come first. Even if there was a moment after he found out that she was alive where he had forgotten it, now it is all back to memory. It is the way it is and it’s immutable, incontrovertible.

"I'm sorry." He doesn't know what else to say. What do you do in these circumstances? He has never said goodbye before, not as a conscious choice. Usually death has always robbed him of the opportunity. It’s not a definitive farewell this time, just a change of perspective, of priorities.

She nods but doesn't smile. "Me too."

*

How long has it been going on? The truth is, he doesn't know it either.

_It's a lie._ The truth is, he doesn't remember a day when what he feels for Clarke didn't exist. A constant presence, strong and never expressed, accepted silently. It accompanied every decision he made. It is part of him, for better and for worse. Completes every memory of his life on earth. The dazzling light of the sun. The prolific amount of stars in the night sky. It’s the sound of the wind in the trees the first time it stroked his face. It’s the taste of rain. The solid sensation of soil, stone and mud. The vertigo of death. The roar of guilt. The tragedy and the heartbreak of an unspeakable absence. The bitterness of nostalgia. The ferocity of a need that goes beyond every reason, every logic, every common sense.

Life before meeting Clarke Griffin is a hazy memory. A childhood of responsibility and secrets ended in a leap into the void, in the echo of a gunshot. It’s inextricably linked to the death of duty and the pain of loss, the blameworthy freedom that arose from it. There is a _before Clarke_ and an _after Clarke_.

Isn't it ironic? That he marks the time, track his story based on her?

*

"Are you their leader or not?" Russell asks, his eyes inquisitive.

Bellamy tries to maintain a carefully neutral expression while his mind is crossed in rapid succession by a series of breath-taking images. _A flash of sun-coloured hair, mercurial eyes full of secrets, a charismatic personality and the smile in her voice when she pronounced his name._

"He is," says Abby, moving to his side. The look she gives him is one of encouragement and silent appreciation. It’s what _she_ would have given to him. "He can speak for us."

*

"Tell us more about this woman, Clarke Griffin." Russell just took a sip of wine from his glass. He lays it on the table and Bellamy loses the thread of his thoughts and has a twitch in his right eye.

"What about her?" he asks dryly.

"We know she was the one who led your people on Earth along with you." Russel crosses his hands in front of him and leans forward. His interest shows no ulterior motives and despite this, he feels an irrational wave of anger. "Hence my curiosity. Why isn't she here?"

"She is still sleeping." His voice is cool and casual enough. "She will remain in cryogenic sleep for another five years."

Russell raises his eyebrows. The interest has given way to genuine astonishment. Sitting in the seat next to his, his wife can barely hide her reproach. "I won't pretend to understand the dynamics of your relationship."

"Good luck with that," he comments ironically. "Sometimes I don't understand them either."

“Maybe it's good that she’s not here. We have heard many things about her. Tales of blood and death. We know your people call her Wanheda."

Anger returns, overpowering, and this time he doesn’t bother to hide it. "Our enemies called her that," he corrects callously.

"Enemies who have become your allies," Russell replies.

Bellamy peels off a grape and turns it over between his fingers. “The apocalypse forces to reassess anyone's priorities. So, the enemies become allies, the friends become family."

Russell nods with the baffled expression of those who would like to understand but are unable to do it completely. “I am sure that under the circumstances you can understand our reluctance to welcome your people among ours. We cannot take the threat you pose lightly. Your past can be an obstacle for the future of my people."

"You have already destroyed a world," Simone starts to speak and _obviously_ it’s to manifest the evident opposition to the much more willing attitude of her husband. “What prevents you from doing it again? Why should we trust you?" While Russell's criticisms are pragmatic and expressed with unnerving education, Simone's judgment is noisy and full of blame.

"Simone," Russell says in a low voice to appease her, but she shows no signs of having heard him.

"Warriors. Assassins. Thieves. Criminals,” she spits. Every word expresses condemnation, it is a censorship. "This is what you are."

"What we were," he replies without missing a beat. Stay calm is essential. He knows what would happen otherwise. Every part of him would like to tell these two strangers what they were forced to do to survive. Not only the atrocities, but also the acts of clemency. And isn't absurd, he would like to scream at them, that the actions committed in the name of love are the most dreadful? There is a part of him, the part of conscience that speaks to him in someone else's voice, that smooths out the hatred that is devouring him with gentle caresses and intimates him in a tone of command to act with caution, to remain lucid and _for heaven’s sake, Bellamy, use your head_. "We learned from our mistakes and are trying to be better," he goes on. “We continue to do it every day. This is our second chance and we intend to show that we deserve it."

"Do you expect us to take your word for it?" Simone asks with a sneer of disgust. "That we put our people at risk for yours?"

This woman is beginning to get on his nerves. “That distinction doesn't have to exist. Mine, yours. We can be one people. We can live together in peace."

"Do you really think it's possible?" Russell asks.

Bellamy turns to him, still glimpsing a glimmer of hope despite the far from positive premises. "I have to believe it," he replies honestly. This time he is not thinking of Clarke, but of Monty and Harper, Jasper and Maya. “I know it's not easy, but it's not impossible. We’re proof of that. We put our conflicts aside to focus on common survival. We can change. We already have."

Russell evaluates him as if he wanted to determine the value of his words and his sincerity. Whatever the conclusion he has reached, it is not in his favour because his expression tinges with regret. "I believe you want to, Bellamy, I do. I just don't believe you can. Please understand, violence is a contagion. I'm truly sorry, but I can't let your disease wipe out what we must now presume to be the last outpost of humanity in the Universe."

Bellamy realizes he has lost. He failed to convince them. Clarke would have succeeded. She could be pretty darn persuasive when she wanted. But she is not there, and he is beginning to believe that it’s really his fault.

*

After the attack of the Children of Gabriel everything seems to change and turns on their side. There is something that eludes him, that he still cannot identify in the whole matter. He doesn’t like Russell's new interest in Abby, for example, promptly motivated by her medical knowledge.

"Clarke would like it here," says Madi.

They are outdoors and watching the children play chasing each other in the garden while some adults water the flowerbeds. The sky is a crimson flame on the horizon and the landscape that surrounds them is a vivid triumph of colours. In the distance a dog barks and the quiet is fragmented by loud laughter and the cheerful shouting of passers-by. It's how it should be, everything they have always dreamed of and even more. It’s the peace they have fought for.

If everything proceeds according to plan, Madi could very soon begin to go to school, having the childhood that Clarke would have wanted for her. Not spent on fighting or hiding, but among boys of her age. Normal. Boring. Safe.

"I think so too," he says, and he thinks of the empty place next to his with a pang more painful than usual and less easy to hide.

Madi squeezes his hand, her dark and insightful eyes are full of understanding. She has learned to recognize the moments when he misses Clarke the most. The interludes of calm in a hectic daily life of commitments, which usually don’t leave him time to think.

Russell discusses with him the possibility of building compounds for them, of identifying areas that would become common. There is talk of sharing and for a while - days that turn into weeks, weeks that turn into months - peace is a reality, something concrete and tangible, until it is no longer. It ceases to be the day Abby and Madi disappear.

**I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met- it may be another hundred years before we meet again. **

**-Edith Wharton **

"We have to wake up Clarke," says Jordan. They have just discovered the truth about the Primes.

"Not an option." Bellamy grits his teeth, the horror of what they have seen undone by anger. Because, how can he wake her up right now? How can he wake her up, look her in the eyes and admit that he has once again broken the promise to keep Madi safe?

"They took Madi and Abby as hostage," Jordan insists and although his eyes are shiny for the thought that that must have been Delilah's fate, his tone is stentorian. “We know what they could do if we don’t stop them. Do you really think she wouldn't want to be woken up for this? If you do it, she will never forgive you. Don't make the same mistake. You know I'm right."

Bellamy closes his eyes. There are a thousand things that he would like to say, to scream. Instead he focuses on Jordan's words. They have a bitter and all too familiar taste.

_If I do this, she will never forgive you_. What does mean that this it's the second time someone have said these words to him in less than six months? He remembers the fear in Madi's eyes at the sight of the Flame and then her resolution in accepting the fate from which she run away all her life when she faced the prospect of the alternative in case of refusal - _a future without Clarke_ -. He remembers Clarke's broken voice, her cries, the noise of the chains when she begged him not to do it. And then the dim light of the tent, the ritual, the grudge and the betrayal contained in a slap that made him tremble like few other things in his life have had the power to do. Only she and Octavia have this ability, that of take the earth from under his feet, stealing his breath, making him feel anxiety and a dismay that sometimes seems atavistic, a part of him as old as time itself, awakened in the hour of need.

He remembers what he has done, what he will always be willing to do for the people he loves. He doesn't do it because he must, but because he has no choice. He lost that faculty years and years ago. On the Ark, when his mother put a bloody bundle in his arms and called her his responsibility. In the heart of a mountain, when he placed his hand over Clarke's on a lever and called it duty. But it never came to that. Duty, responsibility. They are only the names he has chosen to give it, behind which he has chosen to hide. From the beginning, from the dawn of his history, it has always been about love, his heart.

When he opens his eyes again, the decision is made.

*

"She blocked it with a passcode." Raven swears and punches the pod.

"What?"

"It's kind of a lock," she clarifies, rubbing her forehead. She is reflecting, her mind already focused on the spasmodic search for a solution. "Her pod won't open unless we enter the right code."

_Fuck_. "Can you bypass it?" Bellamy asks.

"It may take a while to decrypt it," she replies with furrowed eyebrows, without taking her eyes off the absurd tangle of cables she has just pulled out of the control panel and that she has already begun tinkering with. “Time we don't have. Damn it, Clarke. Why a code?"

"Considering what we're about to do, you can't blame her if she had some serious trust issues," says Murphy. “How many numbers is it? The code."

Bellamy gives him a look and Murphy shrugs. “Come on, it's Clarke. How difficult can it be to figure it out?"

Raven's hands stop and her forehead flattens for an infinitesimal moment before frowning again, this time however her expression is focused, and Bellamy begins to see the light at the end of the tunnel. He lets her do her magic for a minute. He understands that she did it even before she speaks.

"It's a three-digit decimal code," she explains. "Knowing that two digits are even and one odd, this limits the number of possible combinations to three hundred."

"Comes in handy," Murphy comments wryly and claps his hands, before looking at him expectantly. "Well then. Why aren't you trying? " His confusion must be tangible. “Don't look at me like that, man. We are all in the same boat, but you and the princess have always been on a different boat. Nobody knows her better than you."

Maybe once it was like that and even then, it wouldn't have been entirely true. It doesn't cost anything to try. A three-digit code, two of which are even numbers. _Oh_, he thinks and feels a piercing yearning for the woman who sleeps undisturbed under the glass case.

When Murphy sees the first digit he typed, he rolls his eyes. "I knew she was a romantic fool ultimately, but not up to this point." He scoffs. "Let me guess... one hundred?"

Bellamy grins and types the last key. "You forgot me and Raven."

*

"Hello, stranger."

If it were another day, he would laugh at himself, he would be ashamed for the way that his voice trembled, of how he is practically gasping, of how hard his heart is beating against his ribcage. He would find ridiculous that he feels a fourteen-year-old struggling with his first crush. He devours her face with hungry eyes and frankly doesn’t care to look like a fool. Not when Clarke is so close, real, _awake_.

He watches her as she sits on her elbows and rubs her forehead. "Bellamy," she says, and really, he shouldn't be feeling this sort of vibrant pride in knowing that his name was the first word she said when she woke up. She is not smiling and any glimmer of emotion that has gone through her eyes dies when she notices the absence at his side. "Bellamy," she repeats in a dull, cold tone. At the radical change in her voice his blood freezes. "Where's Madi?"

*

"Are you going to ignore me all the time?"

It’s like she didn’t even hear him. Clarke continues to flip through Madi's diary with the expression of someone who is seeing her worst fear happen before her eyes. It was his idea that Madi started writing a sort of daily report for Clarke, but he didn't tell her and when he brought it to her, he pretended not to notice the tears in her eyes and the slight tremor that went through her hands. Resisting the urge to take her in her arms was perhaps one of the most difficult things that has he ever did.

The annotations demonstrate a constant commitment as they have been updated almost daily. Madi has enriched the edges of the pages with twirls and personal comments that at the beginning get a laugh from her. Among the pages tickly covered with writing and sketches of drawings, there are a feather, flowers left to dry, a piece of cloth reminiscent of those hanging in the Sanctum settlement.

Half an hour has passed since Jackson visited her. Clarke has undergone a full medical examination. None of them want to take risks, not after they have lost five men to kidney failure diagnosed too late and caused by a malfunction of the cryogenic pods. It is the new standard procedure in case of awakening and although Clarke initially opposed it, considering it an unnecessary waste of time, faced with their intransigence she had to surrender.

They are waiting for the latest results and the silence is an impenetrable wall between them, tall and long like the Great Wall in the history books of the Earth before the first Apocalypse.

Finally, she closes the notebook, caresses the title page with her fingertips. Her face is hidden by her hair. "I'm not going to stay awake for long."

Bellamy feels like he has been physically hit. On the cheek he felt, acute and anomalous, the phantom sensation of the slap that she gave him in Polis. What she just admitted shouldn't come to him as a surprise. It was the initial plan after all. Five more years. He knows, yet he thought, part of him had hoped that -

"Once you save Madi and your mother, you intend to go back into cryogenic sleep," he says, to avoid any misunderstandings and decides to translate her absence of response as a tacit assent. "Clarke," her name sounds out of tune on his lips, his voice seems to come from very far away, "what happened to you?"

She turns like a fury and here she is, the woman he knows, a taste of sparks of light and danger that burns his eyes for its intensity, as if he had observed the sun too much. It’s a confirmation. Behind the detachment mask she has been wearing since she woke up, Clarke survives, her heart continues to beat, to fight.

"I hope you're kidding," she hisses.

He flinches, instinctively reacting to the hostility and violence he sees in her narrowed eyes. "What I mean-" But he doesn't have time to explain what he meant. The door opens and suddenly they are no longer alone.

"Clarke!" Jordan exclaims with a smile that goes from ear to ear. He must have noticed the tension between them but acts like nothing is out of place. His attention is entirely on Clarke and Bellamy watches with amazement as her face relax in the first real smile that he has seen since… he doesn't even remember when. Clarke draws him into an embrace, dishevels his hair. Jordan tries to stop her, but he's laughing and doesn't seem really bothered by those attentions. _Mama Bear_, he remembers he called her once.

"Jordan," says Clarke and the smile has reached her eyes, creating tiny wrinkles around her eyelids. "You look good, even if a little green. Haven’t acclimated yet to living with the Delinquents?" She gives him a quick glance over Jordan's shoulder, before adding in a more subdued tone, "Bellamy was updating me."

Jordan nods, serious again. "Did he already tell you of Madi?" Bellamy is about to answer, but Clarke won't let him. "What happened?" she asks.

It shouldn't hurt to learn that he has lost her trust to the point that she prefers to hear it from someone she trusts. It’s the state of their relationship in its current form and accepting it is the first step in trying to repair things between them. It shouldn't hurt, but it does. _It hurts like hell._

If he is surprised by the direct question or the fact that it was addressed to him, Jordan doesn’t let them see. "After you - after it was decided not to wake you up, I thought Madi had reacted well all things considered," he says. “She seemed to have accepted your choice. It obviously hurt her, but she was more angry than sorry and not with you, not really."

"Wait," Clarke says. Her brows are furrowed. "What are you talking about?"

"She tore us to pieces," a voice intrudes from the door. Murphy joins them. Bellamy sees the way in which Clarke's body has automatically reached out to him, in which she has opened her arms as if she wanted to embrace him and how ultimately, she chooses not to. Her arms fall rigidly against her hips and the nod she gives to Murphy is brief and polite.

Murphy puts his hands in his pockets and dangles on the spot, returning the greeting with an exaggeratedly bored expression. “She said quite unkind, arguably true things about us. Between the lines I seem to remember something like that nobody is spotless and among us you are the only true hero."

"She actually told you that?" For a moment Clarke looks at him sideway, as if instinctually seeking confirmation from him. The moment of sharing passes. Bellamy blinks and Clarke has brought her eyes back to Murphy and Jordan.

"Yes, pretty pathetic," Murphy answers. “Scolded by a little girl. It felt like seeing you in your glory days at the Dropship."

"How did they find out I'm a nightblood?"

"My fault." Jordan raises his hand and smiles shyly, guilty. "I may have told a couple of stories about you."

Clarke smiles at him again and the transformation when she talks to Jordan, compared to her exchanges with him or Murphy, is undeniable. "Am I your ace in the hole to impress girls?" She winks at him. "You’re a charmer."

*

“You let them take my daughter. Again."

For a moment he doesn't record her spiteful words. Reality has acquired the surreal contours of a dream and the fierce expression on Clarke's face, changed and at the same time unchanged in all that matters, is the same that populates his sleepless nights.

"It's not his fault," Jordan defends him and looks uncomfortable. "None of us wanted that to happen, Clarke."

Clarke purses her lips but doesn't reply. Not that it helps. What she is thinking clearly transpires from the determination with which she avoids direct eye contact and speaks in a soft, monotone voice. "How long have you lost contact?"

"Ten hours."

He can practically hear her reasoning. "Why did you wait so long?"

"We waited for you," Jordan replies, rubbing the back of his neck in a habit that - Bellamy realizes - must have taken after him. "At first, we weren't sure it had been them."

"What convinced you?"

"Jordan discovered a recording," he finally intervenes. He cannot leave Jordan the task of telling her the truth. He is only a boy. It wouldn't be fair. The burden, as well as the blame for what happened, are uniquely his. “We found out what they do to those who have blood like yours. They use them as hosts. They didn’t always offer of their own accord." She pales for the implications and he touches her elbow to offer support before remembering that he has lost that right, that she doesn't want to be touched by him. She made it obvious. "Clarke," he says. "We will save them."

She is not looking at him with wariness, but there is something cautious in the way she allows him to leave his hand on her elbow, in which she doesn’t retract even though her body has stiffened. As if she wanted to prove something to herself and not to him. Eventually, she shakes her head. “You don't know what could happen. You can't promise that."

_True_, he doesn’t know and cannot reply. Clarke covers her eyes and it is a gesture that compresses his heart in a vice-like grip for the vulnerability of which it’s harbinger. "I need to be alone for a minute."

Jordan waves towards the door and Bellamy nods before hanging out with Murphy at his heels.

Once they are in the corridor, he and Jordan plant themselves on either side of the door, Murphy with his back to the opposite side of the corridor. They look like sentries guarding the entrance of a treasure. There is no sound from inside and there is a death silence. The devastation that pervades him is only a paltry fragment of what she is feeling. This is the second time this has happened, and, in both cases, it was his fault.

*

When she comes out, her eyes are reddened, but her face is steadfast and there is a new vigour in her steps, her chin is raised in the ancient shadow of pride. She bends down to murmur something to Jordan and when he sees her walking towards the control room, he grabs her by the wrist to hold her back. "Where are you going?"

She no longer avoids his gaze and is even worse. There is no warmth, it is the careless friendliness reserved for someone you barely know. She breaks free and because of the shock of what he has read in her eyes he lets her go, placing a distance between them that appears even more insurmountable precisely because it is not physical. "I want to see that recording," she responds in a tone that doesn’t allow any room of dissent.

Bellamy recovers immediately and twists his mouth in a grimace. "It's not a good idea."

She doesn't blink. "I'm sorry, did it sound like a request?"

"Murphy, go with her," he orders hurriedly. “Not you, Jordan. I have something I want to talk with you."

*

"You know her," he says without any preamble. He cannot avoid the vaguely petulant tone, the implicit accusation.

Jordan laughs, but it's a laugh of pure nervousness. “Yes, as I know you and Murphy. I told you. My parents-"

"I'm not talking about that," he interrupts him with a frown. “You had already met her. You had already talked to her. When? What are you hiding from me? Listen, I'm not angry that you and her have secrets."

"Only that I didn't share them with you," Jordan replies bitterly.

"That's not what I'm saying."

"But that's what you think."

"If you don't want to talk about it-"

"It's not something of mine to tell." Jordan looks down, clearly on his toes. "You have to talk to her about it, okay?"

Bellamy hesitates. He knows it's an intrusion, but he must know. He risks going crazy otherwise. "Jordan, please. I- I _must_ know."

For a long, terrible moment, he is sure that Jordan will refuse, politely but firmly. Instead, mirabile dictu, he begins to speak. “When I woke up, I was ready to follow my father's instructions verbatim. Clarke didn't let me. She knew that you two would be the first that I would wake up."

Bellamy nods. He had already reconstructed this part of the story and he has just confirmed to him that he was right. "So, she stopped you," he says, but something isn’t right. He figures out from the look on Jordan's face. "You woke her up. That’s how you know her. " Of course, it makes sense. "You woke her up," he repeats and then, like a bolt of lightning, the truth pierces him from side to side. “The final video logs. You were with her when she registered them. How long did it take before I woke up too? How long after that was it that she decided to return into cryogenic sleep?"

Jordan swallows, his shoulders slumped. "Two months."

The pain doesn’t come immediately.

"It's not what it seems," Jordan hastens to say and begins to gesticulate, a habit in which he falls when something agitates him. "She tried, okay? She knew you would need her. She tried to be that kind of person, what you expected her to be, but the weight was too much. Those years in isolation have changed her. It may seem that she is fine, but everyone has their limits and she has achieved her own. She isn’t unbreakable. Our traumas survive within us, they become the demons that we never really stop fighting."

"What happened?" he asks hoarsely.

"Nightmares. Hallucinations. Sometimes it was her mother. Sometimes a woman named Lexa. Sometimes it was you. She never had time to metabolize. The explosion at the Dropship. Mount Weather. ALIE. The Praimfaya. You have never seen what she was like after." It's not the words, but the subtext, what Jordan isn't saying to startle him internally.

"What are you talking about?"

"That whenever she lost someone or made an impossible decision, she was always alone while trying to figure out how to deal with the consequences of her actions, whether it was her choice or not."

*

"You'll have to forgive her one day." Emori hands her the screwdriver she asked. She must have talked to Bellamy or Murphy must have said something to her.

Raven turns up her nose. "Maybe." She tightens the protruding screw and move on to the next. "I was counting on those damned five years to start doing it."

"You have to speed up your work time."

"Not if I can avoid it," she replies and shrugs, pretending a lack of care that is far from feeling. "After all, I don't think she's going to stay." She thinks back to Bellamy's request and promises to check after arranging the ventilation duct in sector 5.

*

"I checked the security records as you asked me," Raven says.

Bellamy doesn’t look away from the reports of the patrol teams on the forest side outside the jurisdiction of the Sanctum. It’s a job that in the past he would have done with Echo that now takes more time to complete than he likes to admit. If they manage to avoid a war - even if it seems inevitable - they need a backup plan, to identify as soon as possible a new territory where build adequate compounds.

Raven's silence is unnerving. "And?" he presses her, more abruptly than necessary.

“Jordan told the truth. Timelines match. Two months." Her voice is colourless, mechanical as she rattles off the information he asked her to verify with cold competence. He knows her well enough to know that she is omitting something, that part of what she has seen must have upset her and that this, the fact of being victim of her own emotions for a person that she promised herself not care for anymore, annoys her.

"Have you seen anything else?" he asks and even if he already knew, has the confirmation of being right when she begins massaging her knee. She does this only when she is anxious.

"More than enough," she responds. Bellamy doesn’t insist, waiting. "You have to talk to her," she finally admits, and her face is more expressive than ever, it betrays her. “She had a gun. It was unloaded. Another time it was a dagger and she had a radio in her hand, but Jordan stopped her. Talk to her."

**I see a stranger in your eyes, where once I saw a soulmate.**

**J. Střelou**

"Absolutely not," Bellamy says predictably. Clarke decides not to focus on him. She had expected that reaction.

"Your plan is insane," Murphy comments, tapping two fingers against his temples. He rolls his eyes. "Right. That wouldn’t be a first."

"At least this time she'll be the inside man," Raven comments in a low but very audible voice.

"She wouldn't be the inside man," Bellamy replies angrily and the look he directs at Raven could freeze Hell. “She would become a target. Russell knows she’s a nightblood."

Clarke taps her fingers on the table and for the first time since they sat down, she meets Bellamy's gaze. "I'm counting on that."

*

She feels his eyes as if he is physically touching her. They pierce her skin like needles. She tries not to mind it, she fails miserably. "Stop it," she blurts out.

Bellamy raises his eyebrows, taken aback. "What?"

Of course, he doesn’t get it. "I know I'm different," she explains, feeling every word weigh on her tongue like a river stone. “It’s been ten years. I’ve aged, Bellamy." She knows how she sounds, how she tends to become under pressure. She hates being snarky about this, but it's the truth and the sooner he accepts it, the sooner they can move forward. “You have seen my video. Did you think that during the cryogenic sleep I would getting younger?"

The expression on his face changes suddenly, darkening. "That's what trouble you? Do you think I care about that?" Hell hath no fury like that of a man convinced that he has been wrongfully accused. “About the fact that you've grown old? Of course, I care,” he growls and it's something she remembers well, that look in his burning eyes. "I care that we didn't grow old together."

As in slow motion she watches Bellamy's hand move closer to her face. Clarke withdraws before he can touch her. "Don't touch me," she says softly, a desperate plea.

She closes her eyes because she can't stand the horror-striken expression on his face. He is pale as a dead man. "Clarke." How long had she not heard him say her name like that? With that intonation halfway between a pleasant torment and a blinding fury? No, she cannot quantify the time, she risks going crazy. "I don’t understand. It's like you’re not you anymore."

_Oh_, she thinks. She opens her eyes and knows that even if she isn’t ready it’s something she has to face.

"Because I’m not," she says and the winter in her bones has also reached her voice. “That person died the day she was the only one who woke up fifty years early. I thought I was going to die alone. _Again_. I lived with the fear that I would never see you again for ten years until that fear turned into something different and when it happened it was too late to fight it, it was already part of me."

She looks at him and knows she's right. She looks at him and feels like she can't feel pain. _You can't cry for your own death._

Bellamy takes a deep breath and swallows. "Tell me what I can do," he whispers, with empty eyes and a hollow voice.

"There is nothing you can do because it has nothing to do with you." Revealing the truth is cruel but pretending and letting him suffer without an explanation would be even more. Ten years have made her more stubborn, but also selfish.

"Everything about you has to do with me."

"Not anymore," she says. "I've never been your responsibility."

The way Bellamy's hands clench into fists doesn’t go unnoticed to her. When she gets up, he doesn't try to hold her back. Now he is afraid to even touch her. Clarke feels her hands, cold as ice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have read and reread this chapter so many times, deciding whether to publish or not, to delete the bits that didn’t convince me (the Bellamy-Murphy conversation, for one thing). 
> 
> In the end I decided to publish it as it is. I'm not sure I was able to make the most of Clarke's change of heart, her slow and progressive acceptance that love is not something you should deserve, that all the horrible things that happened to her didn't they make her a bad person, were just bad luck. I'll let you decide that. 
> 
> Writing is basically this after all: put yourself out there, jump off that cliff even when you are frozen by your fear, a form of creative relief, an open door on the soul of the writer and the reader, a moment of intimate sharing. So… I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Thank you for your time, to the readers who left kudos and posted comments!

Russell's eyes are of a delicate blue-sky, something that cannot really be associated with the sky of this planet, _moon_, not in the daytime at least. Crossing hers they reveal an expression that she hasn't seen in a lifetime. _Sympathetic. Pitying._

"Clarke Griffin," he greets, inviting her to sit down with a wide arm movement. He nods, a way to make her understand that in this meeting he recognizes her as an equal. "The tales of your deeds precede you."

Clarke clucks her tongue and sits across from him. The richly laid table turns her stomach. She thinks about Bellamy and wonders if he too felt the same, if he too felt trapped in this distorted version of memory. _People lying on laid tables as if they were asleep, the only indication of what happened the swollen scarring on their already cold skin, the grimaces of pain and terror on their mouths atrophied in rigor mortis._

"They have been greatly exaggerated," she replies to break the silence, to chase away the ghosts that populate the darkness behind her closed eyelids whenever she dares to seek a moment of deadlock and quiet.

The smile he gives her is a smokescreen, it contains the deceptive coaxing of a flattery. "I don't think that's the case and now that I see you, I know for sure that everything we've been told about you is true." As vague as it was, the light in his gaze seems to burn brighter and more dangerous. It is no longer deep nostalgia, but greed, a mad ambition driven by the blackest despair. "You remind me of someone I lost."

Clarke is not moved. There was a time, she thinks, when such a statement would have stirred something inside her. Not today. Not anymore. Not when her mother's and daughter's live are at stake. "I'm sorry for your loss," she comments. “Let us get to the point. I know you kidnapped my family. Give them back and we won't kill you." Judging by Russell's astonished expression, her gaze must perfectly reflect her mood. It’s raw and wild.

"Aren't you tired of being a destroyer of worlds?" asks the woman sitting next to Russell. She is Russell's wife, but Clarke doesn't remember her name. It means nothing to her. _Murderer_, a voice whispers inside her and ALIE's cruelty in Raven's body takes root in her mind. The monsters she fought became part of her, she absorbed them the moment she shot them down. “Aren't you tired of carrying death with you wherever you go? You are like poison. Nobody is safe with you around."

Do they really think that she can be broken with so little effort? She is stronger than they imagine. The burden of impossible choices no longer rests on her shoulders like the globe for Atlas. It disappeared the moment she accepted the truth. Truth doesn’t kill but fortifies. The truth has freed her, made her unyielding. "I am who I am, and I don’t intend to apologize for what I have done." Her voice doesn’t tremble, doesn’t hesitate. Why should it? There are other things that terrify her, capable of taking away her sleep and reason: a fighting pit smeared with old blood incrustations, the intolerable silence of a deserted spaceship, the red dot of a recording in progress, days that turn into months and months that drag on in years, a loneliness heavier than life.

"You are right. My reputation precedes me. You know what I'm capable of. I have no qualms when it comes to protecting the people I love. You have something of mine," she says, arching forward, "and I will burn the world you know to get it back."

She understands from the look they exchange that it’s a threat they have no intention of taking lightly. Jordan's stories summed this fully and have made the idea of who she is and what she is willing to do so what on another occasion would have been a strategic mistake and a rash move can be exploited, turning into a decisive advantage. _Let them know what awaits them. Let them be aware of the risk._ The purpose of this parley has been this from the beginning.

She lets them converse with each other and recalls the information collected so far. Too few to organize a rescue operation. The number of guards she saw and -

"We have a proposal." Russell's voice sneaks into her estimations, bringing her back to reality.

Clarke remains silent, in a clear invitation to speak.

Simone, here is the name of the woman with the triangular face, reaches out and grabs her right hand. Russell does the same with her left. Clarke observes the semblance of circle that their arms have created and frowns. "If you could save them or yourself, what would you choose?" she asks.

Clarke doesn't blink. She made that choice long ago. "Why do you ask?"

Both are smiling now and it's a smile that makes her skin crawl. It expresses an inexplicable relief, but also something turbid. It still suggests quarantine ward, bodies marred by radiations.

"We offer you a deal," Russell explains.

“What kind of deal?

"You for your family," he answers. "You know how we survive. We have discovered a way to defeat death. Nothing really ends for us. I’m sure your friends have already told you about it. Six years ago, we lost our daughter. We are asking you to offer yourself as a host. Think about it, Clarke. No more wars. You would save your people by avoiding unnecessary bloodshed. You would finally be at peace."

Clarke can't decide what's worse, observing how these people have lost their humanity to the point of distorting an act of selfishness with one of clemency, or the fact that a tiny part of her, for an instant that stretches out indefinitely in a paroxysm of her state of mind, has seriously considered the alternative they are offering. _Not peace, but the end of pain._

"Let me think about it," she says carefully, but the moment of weakness is over. She will not offer herself as a sacrificial victim at the altar of their greed, not spontaneously.

"Of course," says Russell. "As a demonstration of our benevolence and the renewed friendship among our peoples, we are willing to take you to your daughter."

_But not to let her go_, she thinks darkly.

*

"Mom?" Madi blinks, dazed and not yet fully alert. "You’re awake."

Clarke observes the moment when the confusion on her face turns into euphoria and when it happens it is as if she is transfigured. Her eyes widen and she gives her a big, funny smile and yes, maybe it's stupid sentimentality, but ten years have passed since the last time she saw her, six months for her and_ how she grew up_. She pulls her hair away from her temples and can't hold back the need to hug her.

"I am and I will remain so until we find a solution."

When she moves away, Madi's eyes greedily devour the changes in her as if she were to map a new constellation of the firmament, looking for a lost or a wandering star. Whatever she expected, she must not have found it because the pleasure with which she looks at her has taken on a tinge of disappointment and anxiety now.

"Haven't you seen Bellamy?"

"He was there when they woke me up," she responds and from kind of hazy that it was, Madi's disappointment becomes tangible. Impossible not to notice it. She frowns. Is there something she doesn't know?

Before she can work out the whirlwind of her thoughts in words, Miller calls her back from the door he's guarding. "Clarke, we need to hurry."

"Right," she says. They don't have time for this, whatever 'this' is. She grabs her by the shoulders. "Madi, listen to me. I've made a deal with Russell. They're willing to let you go, as long as I take your place." It's a blatant lie. When they’ll realize what she's done, it will be too late. She knows what awaits her. _Madi will be safe._ That's all she needs.

Madi is already shaking her head with obstinate determination. "I'm not leaving you."

"You're not leaving me," she reassures her because as a matter of fact it’s exactly the opposite. "It's not your choice. Miller will take you back to the Eligius." She looks at Miller, to make sure he heard. He nods and she feels a weight easing from her shoulders. "I’ll catch up with you as soon as possible."

That brief exchange must not have gone unnoticed to Madi. She can almost hear the frenetic workings in her head, the effort with which she is connecting the threads behind her behaviour. "You're lying," she concludes, evaluating her reaction. "Why? What are you hiding from me?"

Without being noticed, she lets slip into her palm the anaesthetic she kept hidden in the sleeve of her jacket as a precaution. She embraces her again, tighter and tries not to think about the fact that this is the last time it happens, to push back the lump in her throat that knowing this causes her. "Madi, I love you. You are the most important person for me."

Madi returns the embrace with equal strength and rests her forehead against her shoulder like she hasn't done in a long time. She wants to believe that she is no longer a child, but part of her will always be and it’s that part that is now taking over. "Clarke, you're scaring me."

"You're my daughter. My little girl. Even when I'm gone. Don't forget it, okay?" _I love you. I love you._ She shoots the anaesthetic in Madi's neck and it’s a matter of seconds before her daughter's body collapses into her arms, heavy and unconscious.

Miller moves from the door and picks her up without asking him.

Clarke wipes the edge of her eyes as discreetly as possible. "I entrust her to you. Take her to safety."

There is no time, but she still reaches out to caress Madi's face one last time. She can sense Miller's gaze on her when he asks her, "What about you?"

Lying isn't difficult, but she’s like being stuck. "I’ll manage. I'm made of sterner stuff.”

"I don't like it," Miller argues. "What should I say to Bellamy?"

Her fingers have not yet left Madi's forehead. She traces the outline of her eyebrows with a heavy heart. Meanwhile, she thinks about a completely different face, equally loved. "Don't tell him anything." She tries to smile, even if it hurts like she's palpating a wound before suturing it. (How many times has she had to do it in the past sixteen years? Sew herself up? If she looked at herself in a mirror her skin would be a gathering of scar tissue. The stark, naked testimony of how she survived.) She recalls the things she told him, maybe the last she will ever say to him, ugly words that don’t reflect at all what she feels. She doesn't know how to fix it, if she can. For the first time since she turned thirty, she feels she might cry for the storm raging in her shattered mind. "He already knows," she reassures herself. _Or at least that's what she hopes._

*

"What do you mean she's not with you?"

Bellamy barely refrains himself from shaking him. Firstly, because it’s Miller, secondly because his wrecked face serves to tell him everything he needs to know.

"Precisely what I said," Miller replies and every word seems to be torn from him. "Clarke stayed behind. She said you would understand."

Understand what? That he lost her again, that he was so stupid to let her go on a potentially suicidal mission, knowing full well what she risked, how dangerous it was?

"Bellamy, Madi woke up," says Echo, appearing behind him. Her tense stance in the yellowish light of the corridor immediately puts him on alert. "You have to come to the medbay."

*

The shrieks reach him while he is still in the corridor. Heart-breaking screams and it’s almost impossible to describe the horror and panic they express, the reaction of extreme tension that automatically gets in anyone who listens. He runs the last few meters and enters out of breath. His eyes are immediately magnetized by the shape of body lying on the bed in the corner. She is curled up on herself and her screams echo against the walls.

"What’s going on?"

If possible, Jordan and Gaia seem even more anxious than him. Beside them Jackson has a syringe in his hand. "I don't know. It's been like this since she regained consciousness. She doesn't let anyone touch her."

He nods and approaches cautiously. Hearing footsteps, Madi turns abruptly like a hunted animal. She seems to relax imperceptibly in seeing him and lets out a sigh. Relief is momentary. Her expression curls up again and she emits a guttural line that breaks his heart. Before he realizes it, she is pressed against his chest and is sobbing inconsolably. He gently strokes her head. "Madi, hey. You're safe now."

"You don't understand," he hears her mumble. "She's doing it again. We must go back. It may already be too late."

It takes a moment to register her words. In the next one, every emotion is muffled, and he feels like a shudder went through him. "Hold on. Madi. Madi. Slow down, kiddo. What are you talking about? Who is doing what?"

"Clarke. She stayed behind." Another sob, she speaks so fast that the words overlap. "Lexa warned me. I didn't listen. She took my place. They were looking for a host and now they have found it. They will kill her. She volunteered to save me."

The next few minutes are a confusing spot. He remembers staying with Madi while Jackson anesthetized her and leaving her in the care of Gaia, having glimpsed Jordan's distraught face as he dropped into a corner as if he couldn’t understand what had happened.

When Raven grasps him, blocking the passage, he directs her to the medbay. "Stay with Jordan," he says and looks around with haunted eyes. "Where's Miller?"

Raven stares at him with furrowed brows. "What are you going to do?"

When she doesn't let him pass, he punches the wall. The pain reverberates down the arm and up to the shoulder. It serves the purpose. His head deflates from all other thoughts and Clarke becomes just a burn, no longer a laceration.

Raven is quite distracted by the gesture. He manages to overtake her and head towards the bridge. "I knew that letting her go alone was a stupid idea. _I knew it_."

"There’s no way you could have seen that coming," she replies following him.

"Yes, I could. This is what she does, what she has always done. Sacrifice herself to save us all? It sounds like her. After all it wouldn’t be the first time."

*

"We proposed a deal to Clarke, and she agreed," says Russell.

Bellamy must refrain himself from putting his hands around his neck. "You killed her."

“Clarke chose to offer herself to save your lives. She knew that peace has a price and was willing to pay it. The deal is still valid. Abby Griffin will be released instantly if you agree to the terms of the truce."

Accept them? Do they have a clue what they did, what they sparked? They brought the war to their door and if before it would have been possible to avoid it if they had returned Madi and Abby unharmed, now it’s –

"You should be grateful for the help you get," states a familiar voice, and Russell is not the only one to stiffen. Indra frowns and it’s something incredibly singular to be able to grasp the slight fracture in her steel nerves. Echo grabs him by the arm even before he can think of turning the heartbreak that is tearing his ribcage apart into aggression. He can sense the heat radiated by her lethal body. He turns slowly and what he sees transforms him into a cold-blooded monster, with ice running through his veins and the instinct to kill.

"Josephine," Russell calls her, and the gaze that darts from them to her and vice versa are a warning.

The woman who wears Clarke's face, who walks into Clarke's body, who speaks in her voice, doesn’t seem to be affected at the reproach. She’s still in the same clothes in which he last saw her, but the look in her eyes brings down the last glimpse of illusion and reveals the awful truth. _Clarke is gone._

"Please, don't pretend you cared about her," she drawls and moves like Clarke never would have done, swaying her hips slightly. “Do you really care that she died? You hated her. Each of you blamed her for something. She left you to die in that fighting pit. And you were getting hanged?" she asks, turning to Murphy who looks at her petrified. She taps her forehead with a sneer. “I have access to her memories. I know the heinous things she did and how the guilt was torturing her. All the people she killed, enemies and friends. All those years spent alone while the rest of you slept, all those years staring at the stars, wondering if she would ever see you again, all those impossible choices. She wasn’t a hero, even if she liked to think she was one of the good guys."

"Don't talk about her like you knew her," he snaps. It’s like someone stuck a dagger into his chest. "You know nothing."

"I know enough." Clarke's clear eyes are fixed on him and there is a predatory and mocking light in them. She tilts her head to one side and takes a lock of hair between her fingers, playing with it. “She wanted to end it. She tried so many times, did you know?"

"Don’t you dare-"

"Bellamy!" someone shouts, but he is already upon her and has pushed her against the wall, grabbing her by the throat and covering that smile with his hand as if he could erase it. _Wrong_. That smile is wrong on Clarke's face, just like the way she is looking at him, as if she were amused, as if the whole situation were an entertainment and -

They inject something into his neck and when he falls, the face of the non-Clarke is bent over him, the last image that is carved in his corneas before losing consciousness are the infinite, tiny differences with his Clarke.

*

"You did great. Seriously, if your goal were to have us killed, you almost succeeded." Murphy moves the chains that keep them stuck on the floor. Bellamy doesn’t turn to look at him but knows that he has rolled his eyes. "So now is the silence treatment? What are you going to do? Stupid question. Why can't you let it go? Clarke made her choice."

The mention of her is enough to cause a wave of nausea and self-loathing. “It wasn't a choice. They forced her."

He would expect a joke or a biting response, however when he speaks, Murphy's voice is serious. It is an aspect of him that rarely emerges. Murphy usually prefers to hide behind his jokes, in a defence mechanism that distances him and is his relief valve. "No, they didn't, but it doesn't make any difference to you, does it? You don't want to let _her_ go."

The idea is inconceivable. _You've already done it once_, says a voice inside him, one that is hers in all respects. _Don’t you remember? Six years on the Ring. You thought I was dead and moved on, you forgot me. What is one more time?_

No. He takes his head in his hands, hides his face. Not again. He can't do it again. Even if he survived the first time, at this point it’s unthinkable. Not now that he knows about the radio calls, not after the video logs. You don't love to be loved in return, but when you are... _when you are, it changes everything._ "I can't," he murmurs, his voice cracking with emotion as he thinks back to all those years ago.

“They are offering us peace. I know it's difficult, I know you hate it, but _think_. Do you really believe she would have wanted this?"

“I don't know what Clarke would want. It's too bad we can't ask her.”

"Liar. You know damn well."

Yes, he knows. Even if he doesn't want to admit it. He clenches his fists to fight back the anger and the grief that is tearing him apart. "I only know that if she had been in our place, if they had done to one of us what they did to her, she would have reduced this place to ashes."

"Maybe," Murphy acknowledges. “She wouldn't have wanted us to do the same for her. Clarke always thought she was expendable and that's exactly why she wanted us to do our best. Be the good guys. Certainly not to risk our lives to avenge her. She volunteered."

Again, those damned words, the same ones used by Russell. He hates them and hates her for putting him in this position, for having forced him once again to take charge of the world alone. (They continue to say that it was her choice, as if this made acceptable the abomination of which they are guilty, but what choice is one like this? What kind of life is one that forces you to exchange your freedom to save that of your family? And what does it say about all of them that they allowed it?) "Yes, to save all of us! Again!"

"They can help us." Murphy doesn’t seem impressed by his vehemence and he no longer wants to listen to what he has to say, the reasonableness of his statements. "They know the land. They can show us how to survive, build our compounds as they promised."

But at what price?, he would like to scream. He doesn't care, not if the price is Clarke.

"Do you know what's the worst part?" he asks and emits a chocked noise, halfway between a bitter laugh and a sob stuck in the throat. He runs a hand through his hair, piercing it from side to side. “I was the one who woke her up. I knew what would happen. I knew she would have done anything to save Madi. I knew her plan was risky. I knew she would have been a target. I knew it and I let her go anyway."

It’s his fault and it’s a fault he will never be able to atone, that he will never forgive himself for. He feels Murphy's hand on his shoulder and is of no comfort to him. It doesn’t fill the abysmal void of Clarke's absence.

“You could never have stopped her. She wouldn't have let you. Insanely brave, or quite insane. Stubborn to the core."

Murphy laughs and although it sounds strangled, Bellamy laughs with him, bringing a hand to his face. "Sounds like her."

The moment of levity is short-lived and in the thunderous silence that follows, Murphy says exactly what he needed to be told. "If you hadn't woken her up, they would have killed the kid and Abby."

They can't know for sure. Bellamy sighs. "I know."

"You would have lost her anyway."

"She would hate me," he corrects wearily and wonders if that's how she felt, worn out and lonely and too old to bear herself, "but at least she would still be alive."

*

“I know it's not easy to accept it, but we have to move on. We must survive. That's what she would have wanted."

His words sound hollow to his own ears. The look Abby gives him overflows with the same sense of immeasurable emptiness.

"I know my duty," she replies dryly, hugging herself as if she is trying to protect herself from pain, but at the same time recognizing that it is a vain attempt. Pain already exists within her. “I have lost my husband for the greater good. I lost Marcus.” A tear lines her cheek. “Now I've lost my daughter too."

*

_She is alive_. Locked in her own mind as in a cell in the skybox. She is _alive_ and he can start breathing again.

**There's a corner of my heart that is yours. And I don't mean for now, or until I've found somebody else, I mean forever. I mean to say that whether I fall in love a thousand times over or once or never again, there'll always be a small quiet place in my heart that belongs only to you. **

**-Beau Taplin **

After Monty has disappeared, Clarke retraces the corridors of her mindspace. She opens a door randomly and ends up in the fighting pit. Back against the wall, she collapses on the floor. She passes her arms around her ankles and rest the forehead against her knees.

"Go away," she grumbles when she hears footsteps. Instead of walking away, the intruder approaches and sits down with a thump beside her. She hears him humming in a low voice a melody she seems to recognize (_sunny days stolen during the war, a strong presence behind her ready to support her in the event of fall, a boy with a sharp smile like a dagger blade and knuckles almost always skinned. To fight against hunger and exhaustion, building a utopia of new among the rubble of a world that is collapsing_). She lifts her head and stares at him sideways.

He is younger, like himself as he was when she left after Mount Weather, but his injuries are in different areas. There are abrasions on his left cheek and another close to his right eye. He has a split lip and - _she understands_. She knows why her mind chose this version of him, extracted from the day he taught her how to handle a gun, when he killed Dax. The day she admitted that she needed him. If she were a vain person, she would almost admire this subconscious demonstration of pragmatic logic.

"You are a fragment of my imagination," she accuses him.

He nods, unfazed. "I am." He is eating something and hands it to her. On his open palm, round and greenish, Monty and Jasper’s jobi nuts.

She suppresses the instinctive urge to drop them, but when she sees him chew a second and then a third, she cannot avoid a grimace. "Why are you still here?"

“You're the smart one, princess. You tell me."

“If I can no longer control my projections it means that I have no more power in my mind. Josephine won. I'm disappearing."

“Or you're lying to yourself. You want me here."

Clarke frowns. Not because there is no truth in what he said, but because observing him like this, shaved and cocky, covered with mud and with recent bruises to mark his skin, upsets her more than she likes to admit.

“If these are your last moments, we both know who you want to spend them with. That's why I'm still here,” he says with a smirk. His brown eyes pierce her and are like those of Bellamy before Praimfaya, haunted and arrogant. She had forgotten how hard-headed he was and what she felt then, how much it made her feel alive arguing with him, fighting to get the last word. "You _want_ me here," he repeats. "Don't deny it."

When he puts his hand against her face, she doesn’t withdraw, not this time, not when she has the certainty that -real or not- it will be the last. She lets the deceptive heat warm her skin, soften in ways that are incomprehensible the ruined shards that were once her strength, her ability to act promptly and choose the lesser of two evils. He bends his head, and she moves to get closer, to feel the rough consistency of the calluses and to believe for a moment, only one, they can go back in time. When everything seemed incredibly difficult and that now, with the kind of wisdom that comes from experience and mostly from lost youth, it appears easy and fills her with homesickness although wasn’t exempt from problems, trials and suffering. 

"You are so young," she murmurs against his skin.

Bellamy pulls her hair away from her face. They are a shock of tousled, dirty blond plaits, like she wore them back then. It seems that an entire powder keg or the muddy side of a river are hidden between her locks. When he rests his forehead against hers, she feels his breath against her nose. "You too."

"I haven't felt young in a long time." It’s easy to admit it looking like this, when she had not yet become Wanheda, when she had not yet written a list of survivors condemning the rest of her people to certain death. Before Praimfaya, before Madi, before ten years of solitude with a sword instead of a heart.

He smiles, a slow and almost lazy, mocking smile. His hand has moved behind her neck, is supporting her head, while the other has remained against her cheek, With his thumb he rubs the wet space under her eyelids, drying the transposition of what is no longer weakness, but only tiredness. "Were you ever?"

"And you?" she asks back.

"Touché," he answers with a chuckle. The look he gives her is full of fondness.

Before she loses her nerve, Clarke leans slightly forward. (Why not? Yeah, _why not_? It won't hurt anyone other than her.) When their faces are so close that she can count the freckles that pepper his nose and cheekbones, Clarke stops. The wounds have healed and the Bellamy who is looking at her, full of awe and as if he feared that she could disappear at any moment, is much more similar to the Bellamy who asked her to stay after Mount Weather, the first time she turned her back on him. But it is not him. He wears Azgeda furs and she remembers. She touches his face with her fingertips, as she remembers he did when he found her tied and gagged, when she begged Roan not to kill him, traded her life to save his. "Can I touch you?"

He nods, swallowing, his Adam's apple prominent and at the same time less pronounced than she remembered. To separate them, just a whisper and the thousand, stupid impediments that have hindered them since day one. She presses her lips against his and feels him tense and then respond immediately, as she knew -_hope_\- he would. It is not a gentle kiss. It’s deep and eager, a battle between equal and opposite forces. It’s their first, but it also holds a sense of finality that almost makes her cry. When they disengage themselves to catch their breath, they stare at each other with watery eyes and the face of someone who just received some terrible news.

"You called me every day for six year then let me to die in a fighting pit.”

"Yes," she says biting her lower lip, "and there hasn't been a day since then that I haven't regretted it."

He is no longer the fiery, bold leader-boy, but the man ready to ensure her safety, exchanging it with the lives of two hundred and eighty-three prisoners. There are six years of differences to be discovered. "Why did you do that?" he asks softly.

She knows that she cannot lie to him, especially not here, in the faithful reproduction of her deepest regret. "Because I was angry with you and I wanted you to feel the same. You betrayed my trust."

“You’re talking about Madi. Or Echo?"

"Both maybe?" She shakes her head, looking down. "I don’t know. I'm not sure about anything anymore."

"Why did you call me?" he insists, putting a finger under her chin and forcing her to face him, look into his eyes.

She sighs. "I’ve already explained to you."

“Yeah, but that was a recording. You never told me to my face. Clarke. You could have talked to anyone else, but you chose me instead."

She doesn't know what convinces her. Maybe it's the request contained in his eyes (although now he’s showing signs of aging, his eyes have remained those of the Bellamy she embraced when they were looking for Luna with Jasper and Octavia. She doesn't know how it is possible. She wonders if in the end they never changed, if instead it was she who didn’t recognize that light of plea and absolution, if it has always been there from the beginning and she was really so blind to not even notice it immediately for what it was.)

"I chose you because I never felt the need to talk to everybody else." The quiet admission doesn’t trigger any added heartache and perhaps this is the first step to recovery. Not just admit that there is a problem but stop denying the symptoms that worsened the disease. “I missed their company, but not the way I missed you. You cannot live without your heart. Trust me ‘cause I tried for sixteen years." She bites the inside of her cheek deep enough that the taste of blood invades her mouth. "I miss you," she murmurs, touching his cheek and it's up to him now to turn his face towards her, put his lips to her wrist and leave them there in the semblance of a kiss of utter devotion.

"I'm right here," she hears him say.

"Not this version of you, but the one I haven't lost yet."

"You never lost me," he promises. "No part of me."

“I wish that were true. I wish you had forgiven me."

"I already did. One hundred and twenty-five years ago." He looks so confident. How can she not believe him? Especially when he keeps looking at her like that and reaches out for her. "Can you say the same?"

For the first time in years, the cold recedes and so the loneliness, the guilt that lives in her shadow. Sitting in the fighting pit where she let him to die, Bellamy's arms wrapped around her, she may cry at any moment and not from sadness.

*

Clarke's body jerks and she starts breathing again with agonizing, rasping gasps. Later, when she is too exhausted to continue talking, she falls asleep with her fingers tight around his hand.

_Never again_, he swears to himself, brushing her hair away from her face and touching her forehead with his lips in a kiss that intends to seal his silent promise. _Never again._

*

She wakes up and for a moment doesn’t remember where she is, what happened. In the dim light, the tent could be Becca's laboratory. She is back on the Eligius and her pod still doesn’t work. (She has always lived through stolen days, stumbling from one catastrophe to the next, waiting, fighting, falling, and getting up.)

Then she remembers. The hours before sleep get the best of her, the whispered truths they exchanged, trying to fill in a handful of hours six months of gap for her and ten years for him. _He told her about the breakup with Echo, how difficult it’s for him to forgive Octavia, about Jordan and Madi, the new planet and anguished nights spent next to her pod. She told him about a loneliness so deep that it convinced her that she could not find any semblance of comfort, like wandering in a desert without food and the relief of shaded areas under a scorching sun, only wishing for it to be over soon. Convincing herself that it can no longer be a matter of bad luck, too many tragedies cannot be simple coincidences and that then they must be the result of past actions, that one receives what one deserves. Longing for physical contact to the point of feeling torn, as if someone were devouring her from the inside, to the point that being touched by him when she woke up was a shock, like being crossed by a jolt of electricity._

She remembers. She died and then she wasn’t anymore. He saved her. From Josephine and from herself.

When she tries to sit up, her head swirls. The only thing that anchors her to reality is his hand firmly entwined with hers. The man to whom the hand belongs, sleeps close to her, in a position that seems rather uncomfortable. Even in unconsciousness his facial muscles are contracted in concern and the angle of the body is arranged so that it is as close as possible to her, as if even in sleep his first instinct was to watch over her.

Clarke doesn’t hold back and wipes the hair from his forehead. He must be a light sleeper because Bellamy's eyes suddenly open wide and stare into hers with an urgency and a trepidation that it’s disarming. "Clarke?" he asks in a voice husky with fatigue and the tone is the same as a few hours ago, as if he had to make sure that she is really herself, that it wasn’t a dream.

And just like that it’s as if the last wall she erected to protect herself had just collapsed, yielding to the powerful blows of yet another tireless attack. She doesn't perceive any difference inside her, but something must shine through her face because Bellamy's expression changes completely, suddenly. His eyes are suspiciously bright and seem to curl as if they can't contain a violent emotion, his lips twist as if he's trying not to cry and Clarke recognizes that look, of course she recognizes it. Her heart skips a beat. She opens her shaking arms, even though she thinks the tremor is more because she survived a near-death experience. He still hesitates, despite he didn’t show the slightest doubt the night before, like he can’t go on until she gives permission and she realizes the reason while the last words she told him resonates in her mind, hard and ruthless. _Don’t touch me._

"Come here," she mutters, and Bellamy barely lets her complete the sentence before engulfing her in an embrace that is an apology for their past, an admission of mutual guilt.

"I'm sorry." She presses her face against her neck, his stubble pinching her skin. She sighs and hears him do the same. She doesn’t need to explain what she's referring to. She knows he will understand. It's Bellamy. He always understands.

"Me too," he replies and as he knew that she was talking about their last meeting, it's up to her to do the same now. Recognize the frustration and criticism with which he condemns himself for something that he could not have prevented even if he wanted to, that wasn’t his fault, but for which he feels equally, irrationally responsible. It was selfish to think that the ten years she spent alone would have influenced no one else but her, that she was the only one who changed. She’s not the same, it’s true, but not to the point of being unrecognizable, not to the point of continuing to deny her feelings for this man, especially not because of something so petty and deleterious as fear. (Not of rejection, but of the unknown, of the danger that a happiness like that entails.)

"I was terrified of ending my days alone," she says and Bellamy's grip around her waist becomes spasmodic, tightens on the verge of hurting. She feels him tremble, not only for what she confessed, but for the prospect of the alternative, of what they have been a step and half away from losing. _Once again._

"And I that I would spend the rest of my life without you."

She blinks and doesn’t know what she is feeling exactly, it’s an amalgam of furious joy and misery that is not necessarily painful but has something cathartic.

She moves away just enough to meet his eyes and his hands immediately run to support her face delicately. The way he is looking at her, fierce protection and a love that is not possessive but oblative, makes her want to fill the short distance that separates them to kiss him. The same desire is clearly imprinted in his glassy eyes. She dares not hope.

"You're my heart." The words echo those of the last video log she left for him, but they have a less bitter taste. For a moment she’s eighteen again, perpetually weary and starving, with a herd of kids to take care of and a daring co-leader to back her up always and in any case, overwhelmed how all young people feel and unknowingly free from the mistakes that have yet to be committed and expiated.

The smile Bellamy gives her is the same of that boy and at the same time different, more mature, cognizant. He has something that the other didn’t have, expresses a calm and reassuring contentment, a peace that casts out any residual wrong or malevolence that could still exist between them. (And she knows, she _knows_ that the road to recovery is still long, but with him at her side it seems less terrible and frightening to think about the future and project herself into it.) In resting against hers, when their lips touch in a quick and chaotic kiss, more fit for inexperienced kids than for someone their age, that smile only seems to get bigger. "You are mine."

**Chameleon-like, I am trasformed by light. **

**-Erica Jong **

He finds her among the crowd of people who embrace each other, happy that it is over, relieved to have survived once again, while the sun transforms the world, recreating it, making it pure light.

She meets him halfway, accelerating her pace and before he realizes what is going on, they are in each other's arms and he holds her so tightly that he wishes for that golden dawn to never end. They are alive. Nothing catastrophic has happened, nothing irreparable. She is not stuck in space while he is on an alien moon. Days of agony and a new, long, heart-breaking separation aren’t waiting for them. They are alive and together and if this is not happiness, he doesn’t know what else it is, he doesn’t know how to call this bubble of warmth and perfection that surrounds them.

Despite her grief for Abby, despite the reassurances they are giving each other, despite her eyes are brimming with unshed tears, he knows it’s the same for her too. He feels it in the way she embraces him, like she did so many years ago after the ring of fire and her first escape from Mount Weather, in the way she breathes heavily into the crook of his neck while trying not to burst into sobs, in the way she looks at him and speaks to him. Sixteen years, but she finally come back home, with him. They made it. She is there. _I got you. I’ll keep you safe._

"I'm still older than you," she says, and he cracks up, even though his eyes burn, and it seems that his chest can burst at any moment.

"You always were. Far too serious and mature for your age. Bossy and brave from the first day I met you." He leans his forehead against hers and closes his eyes. He feels Clarke's fingers tracing the contours of his cheekbones, the touch of her fingertips as light as butterfly wings, like embers burning against his skin. "I'm sorry I couldn’t answer in these sixteen years."

"I'm sorry too."

"I'm here now. If you want it. If you want me."

She holds her breath and looks at him with a strange intense face and then- "Yes."

"Yes?" he repeats, and his disbelief must be evident.

Clarke wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him, long and hard, until they’re breathing in each other air. When it ends, they both have a smile on their faces that hurts in a way that is not entirely annoying.

"Wipe that grin off your face before Madi or Jordan sees you.”

"Too late," he complains, putting an arm around her waist. He stares at a point behind her persistently. Clarke turns around. She follows his gaze and if possible, her smile broadens, her eyes twinkling. Not far those directly concerned are gawking at them. There is a contagious joy lurking behind the little girl's smile. Next to her Jordan just beams as if he's been expecting this exact development.

Clarke presses her face against his shoulder and when she leans her head back to look at him, her lids half-closed, he leans forward to kiss her again, fast and hungry, stealing that smile from her lips.

"Don't mind me," Murphy proclaims, walking past them. "All this happiness made me blind."

"And listening to you is a delight to the soul, Murphy.”

"I heard you, Clarke," he yells back, still within earshot. "I said I am blind, not _deaf_."

**You claim your joy. ** **You lay your roots: Blood and bone and fire and ash. And in this land of free and home of the brave, you plant yourself. ** **Like a flag. **

**\- Samira Ahmed**


End file.
